How to format your references using the Frontiers in Neuroinformatics citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Frontiers in Neuroinformatics. For a complete guide how to prepare your manuscript refer to the journal's instructions to authors.

Using reference management software

Typically you don't format your citations and bibliography by hand. The easiest way is to use a reference manager:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX syles are usually part of a LaTeX template. Check the instructions to authors if the publisher offers a LaTeX template for this journal.

Journal articles

Those examples are references to articles in scholarly journals and how they are supposed to appear in your bibliography.

Not all journals organize their published articles in volumes and issues, so these fields are optional. Some electronic journals do not provide a page range, but instead list an article identifier. In a case like this it's safe to use the article identifier instead of the page range.

A journal article with 1 author
Clery, D. (2015). Space physics. LISA Pathfinder tests spacetime sensor. Science 350, 894–895.
A journal article with 2 authors
Ju, T., and Cummings, R. D. (2005). Protein glycosylation: chaperone mutation in Tn syndrome. Nature 437, 1252.
A journal article with 3 authors
Royle, N. J., Russell, A. F., and Wilson, A. J. (2014). The evolution of flexible parenting. Science 345, 776–781.
A journal article with 7 or more authors
Drissner, D., Kunze, G., Callewaert, N., Gehrig, P., Tamasloukht, M., Boller, T., et al. (2007). Lyso-phosphatidylcholine is a signal in the arbuscular mycorrhizal symbiosis. Science 318, 265–268.

Books and book chapters

Here are examples of references for authored and edited books as well as book chapters.

An authored book
Marcus, Y. (2012). Supercritical Water. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
An edited book
Pigola, S. (2008). Vanishing and Finiteness Results in Geometric Analysis: A Generalization of the Bochner Technique., eds. A. G. Setti and M. Rigoli. Basel: Birkhäuser.
A chapter in an edited book
Incherdchai, J. (2016). “Policies for National Museum Management: Solutions and Development,” in New Horizons for Asian Museums and Museology, ed. N. Sonoda (Singapore: Springer), 57–67.

Web sites

Sometimes references to web sites should appear directly in the text rather than in the bibliography. Refer to the Instructions to authors for Frontiers in Neuroinformatics.

Blog post
Andrew, E. (2014). Bizarre, Ghost-Like Animal Sets New Record For Deepest Living Fish. IFLScience.

Reports

This example shows the general structure used for government reports, technical reports, and scientific reports. If you can't locate the report number then it might be better to cite the report as a book. For reports it is usually not individual people that are credited as authors, but a governmental department or agency like "U. S. Food and Drug Administration" or "National Cancer Institute".

Government report
Government Accountability Office (1992). Federal Research: Small Business Innovation Research Program Shows Success But Can Be Strengthened. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation
Clyde, K. M. (2012). Instructors’ Perceptions of the National Association of Schools of Music Influence on the Development of Undergraduate Applied Percussion Curricula. Scottsdale, AZ: Northcentral University.

News paper articles

Unlike scholarly journals, news papers do not usually have a volume and issue number. Instead, the full date and page number is required for a correct reference.

New York Times article
Gustines, G. G. (2016). At School, a ‘March’ Through the Civil Rights Movement in Visual Detail. New York Times, C5.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by name and year in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (Clery, 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Ju and Cummings, 2005; Clery, 2015).

Here are examples of in-text citations with multiple authors:

  • Two authors: (Ju and Cummings, 2005)
  • Three or more authors: (Drissner et al., 2007)

About the journal

Full journal titleFrontiers in Neuroinformatics
AbbreviationFront. Neuroinform.
ISSN (online)1662-5196
ScopeComputer Science Applications
Biomedical Engineering
Neuroscience (miscellaneous)

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